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RE: [ Revision #2 ] 15 elementary truths about XML

• From: Norm Birkett <Norm.Birkett@reval.com>
• To: <xml-dev@lists.xml.org>
• Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2011 11:20:16 -0400

FWIW, I agree with your first point. XML is a human-readable language,
as well as a machine-readable language, and so XML documents and
fragments thereof can exist outside computers.

I'm not sure your example supports your second point, however, because
the memory representation of the XML is in bytes or other such units of
storage. But your whiteboard and paper examples do support your second
point, as would this example: I imagine the string "<wallaby/>".

"Byte" seems to have taken on a broad enough definition in this thread
that it's hard for me to see that any xml in a computer or on optical or
magnetic (or punchcard or ...) media would not be represented in bytes.

Norm Birkett

> -----Original Message-----
> From: David Lee [mailto:dlee@calldei.com]
...
> Now for my own;  I disagree with this slightly:
> 
> >> 2. As noted above there are no characters in a computer, only
bytes.
> Thus, "An XML document is a sequence of characters" actually means
that
> an
> XML document is an abstraction >> of the underlying sequence of bytes.
> 
> 
> To me this implies XML has to be both
> A) On a computer
> B) In a text serialized form in bytes
> 
...
> B) There is a large body of practice where XML never ends up in text
> serialized form in 'bytes'.    Not referring to Infoset or XDM.   But
> rather
> in-memory "strings" of text serialized XML.
> Say a Java program dynamically creates an XML text message, in a Java
> String
> and parses it in memory.   No where has it been converted to any
> encoding in
> bytes.
> Yet it is still "XM".
> 
> So I would say more clearly "XML Is an abstraction of a sequence of
> characters" but not necessarily is there 'underlying bytes'.
...

• Follow-Ups:
  • RE: [ Revision #2 ] 15 elementary truths about XML
    • From: "David Lee" <dlee@calldei.com>

• References:
  • [ Revision #2 ] 15 elementary truths about XML
    • From: "Costello, Roger L." <costello@mitre.org>
  • RE: [ Revision #2 ] 15 elementary truths about XML
    • From: "David Lee" <dlee@calldei.com>